The One Who Changed Everything. Lilian Darcy
chair while Jackie made some finger movements over something on the desktop, apparently sending a text message via cell phone to her boss, which meant that Daisy was left not knowing whether Tucker was actually on site or not.
And that was frustrating because she really, really wanted to see him right now, since she really, really didn’t want her sister to wing off to Africa in the wrong mood. At times, you could almost suspect that Mary Jane was actively dreading the trip.
Daisy sat, and kept sitting.
Had Tucker checked his phone yet?
Had Lee?
Jackie went on with her work, and Daisy looked around. On the wall to her right there was a whole gallery of photos, beautifully enlarged and mounted. Before-and-after shots of Reid Landscaping projects, candid pictures of the team at work. Here was Tucker himself, perfectly dressed in a dark suit, hair cut short, beard like Orlando Bloom’s, accepting an award for a big landscaping project. The award plaque was right here on the wall, also.
And here he was again in another photo, very differently dressed, leaning on a shovel and grinning at the camera. This time he was clean-shaven, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his legs bare and tanned in faded green shorts. He had a couple of staff members standing on either side—a young man with knobby knees and a tall, pretty, fair-skinned brunette with a belt cinching the top of her cargo pants against her very slender waist. It was the closest thing Daisy could find to a personal photo.
Tucker looked the same as he did ten years ago, and yet not. His frame had filled out with more muscle. He had more laugh lines around his eyes, especially when wearing that satisfied, outdoorsy grin.
His presence dominated the whole photo and he looked more confident than he had been the last time they’d met. He gave off a sense of energy and presence, the way a man did when those big plans in his head from years ago have become a reality better than he’d ever dreamed.
And, oh, that grin! Strong and content and full of life.
Daisy didn’t really recognize the grin, when she thought about it. He’d been tense during those few days she’d spent in his company around the time of the canceled wedding. Prickly and uncomfortable and too watchful sometimes. Strong and silent, as she’d said to Mom. He hadn’t grinned much. Had he smiled at all? She hadn’t really felt that she’d gotten to know him at all.
With nothing to do but wait, and with Mary Jane’s accusations from earlier this morning still fresh in her mind, she found herself thinking back in a way she hadn’t done in...oh...ever.
Chapter Two
Ten Years Earlier
Lee’s fiancé didn’t smile.
At all.
“Nice to finally meet you, Daisy,” he said, barely moving his lips. Standing beside him and beaming at both of them, Lee didn’t seem to notice.
Tucker Reid’s face was set like a rock, with a deeply grooved frown between his brows, blue eyes that Daisy couldn’t read and a closed, flat mouth. And it wasn’t so much that he looked angry or unhappy, he just looked totally determined to keep any expression at all from showing on his face, or let any of the wrong words escape his lips.
She registered the barrier he’d put in place as she shook his hand in greeting, so she let her own smile ebb and just nodded at him and quickly took her hand away from the large, strong grip. “Same back at you. It’s about time, isn’t it?” Even though the wedding was only five days from now, this was the first time they’d met.
Daisy had been in Paris for a year, and Lee and Tucker had only known each other for a few weeks when she’d flown off to France. They hadn’t even been dating at that point and were just friends. They’d both had summer jobs at a big-chain hotel, working long shifts to put some decent money in the bank.
Lee was a rather private person. Even though the rest of the Cherry family was close at hand, they hadn’t met Tucker, either, until he and Lee were practically engaged.
Mom, Dad and Mary Jane all adored him, apparently, and were incredibly happy and excited about the wedding.
“He was so wonderful about Lee’s accident,” Mom had been gushing at regular intervals during the twenty-four hours since Daisy’s arrival home, the same way she’d gushed in phone calls and emails while Daisy was in Paris. “He was there by her hospital bed for days on end. She said she couldn’t have gotten through the pain without him.” Burns hurt a lot, as Daisy knew from her own experience of minor ones in restaurant kitchens. “He never once made her feel it was her fault. He really talked her around on that, because she was beating herself up for being careless with that hot oil in the fryer.”
Daisy wasn’t sure yet how she was going to feel about Tucker Reid. He stood there while Lee went on talking for just a little too long about how great it was to have all three Cherry sisters together again, and how much had changed over the past year, and how happy she was about absolutely everything.
He gave a tiny nod occasionally, but that was about it, and Daisy decided it was time to extract herself from the whole situation. There was something about the way he was holding himself that wasn’t right, something about the look in his narrowed blue eyes, but she didn’t have time to think about that. She’d promised to show off her new French dessert-making skills tonight—no, of course she wasn’t too tired!—and there was a lot to do in the kitchen.
“Mom, I need to get started on the peach tart and the raspberry dacquoise,” she said. “Or I’ll crash from jet lag before I’m done.”
She undraped the gorgeously patterned and very Parisian fringed silk scarf from around her neck and shoulders and tossed out her hair, itching to get to work.
Mmm, it felt so good to be home, and yet to know herself a little changed from the person she had been the last time she was here. She’d learned so much about fashion and taste and grace and creativity in Paris. She’d spent hours browsing boutiques and galleries and food markets, people watching at pavement cafés, window-shopping, dreaming.
Even though dessert-making was her main creative outlet and her planned profession, she loved to draw, as well, and she’d filled a stack of sketch pads with rapid-fire impressions of Paris and its people. She hadn’t wasted a second of the trip.
She felt as if she was bursting with life, bursting with the love of it, its beauty and variety and vibrancy. Lee had the reputation in the Cherry family of being the most energetic of the three girls, but Daisy had decided this wasn’t true.
Lee might be incredibly athletic and outdoorsy, just as her fiancé was, but there were other kinds of energy. The energy of her own creativity sizzled inside Daisy, and right now she couldn’t wait to get started on those luscious desserts.
On her way to the kitchen, she glanced back at the bridal couple, still a little thrown by her first meeting with her future brother-in-law—by how little he’d given her, by the fact that she had so little to go on in finding out who he was. Lee was looking up at him and she wasn’t smiling and animated anymore. Tucker stood awkwardly, his head tilted in his fiancée’s direction, but his eyes were elsewhere, restless.
They landed on Daisy for a tiny moment and she felt too warm suddenly. What was that about? Why was he looking at her now, when he hadn’t met her eyes once during their greeting and awkward first conversation? What was wrong with the man?
Or is it something wrong with me?
Everyone was so happy about the wedding. It would be horrible if she didn’t get along with her sister’s husband!
Present Day
In the end, of course, Daisy’s feelings about Lee’s groom hadn’t mattered. The wedding had never taken place. Mom had nagged her a little about the “strong silent type” comment. “You’re not suggesting he’s not smart enough for her, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
“He’s